Syrian Electronic Army Strikes Tango

After hacking several Twitter accounts, the Syrian Electronic Army is back to claim stealing millions of email addresses and phone numbers from the millions of users of the popular messaging service Tango. The SEA says it will give the data to the Syrian government soon. The hack was publicly announced by Tango on Saturday, but only said that "some data" has been accessed.

Tango experienced a cyber intrusion that resulted in unauthorized access to some data. We are working on increasing our security systems.

— Tango (@TangoMe) July 20, 2013

 

Hole is Found in Apple Developer Center, Causes Shutdown

Security researcher Ibrahim Balic said he didn't want to steal personal data from Apple's Dev Center. Balic researches company petals and then sends those companies bugs with personal data pool encryption. He found 13 bugs which he then reported to Apple, via Bug Center. Apple then shut down the site because the bugs allowed personal details and other information to be taken from the site. The company first claimed it was "down for maintenance", but later sent an email to developers explaining what happened. I am unsure when the Dev Center will be back online.

Google Q4: Only Getting More Awesome

Google CEO Larry Page revealed that mobile ads may not be working out very well, but that Google's overall state isn't horrible. There are more than 900 million activated Android devices globally, and 1.5 million more are coming online every day. It's pretty crazy to see this kind of adoption rate, given that Android was launched under five years ago. Over 50 billion apps have been downloaded from Google Play. They have paid more money to developers this year than in all of 2012. Updates were included for Google+ and Google Maps. Best of all, Project Loon was made public, and will be making history soon enough. Overall, not a bad quarter for Google.

See below for the full Google+ post from Larry with the full summary from the earnings call:

Google had a great quarter with over $14BN in revenue -- up 19% year-on-year.  Amazing performance for a company that has yet to celebrate its fifteenth birthday!

We live in a world of abundant computing, with multiple operating systems and increasing numbers of devices.  It is a very different environment from when Google started.  There was essentially one OS and one device category:  the PC.

These kinds of changes don’t happen that often, once a decade, maybe even less frequently.  But the shift from laptop to mobiles, from one screen to multiple screens creates tremendous opportunity for Google.

With more devices, more information and more activity online than ever, the potential to improve people’s lives is immense: Getting you the right information just when you need it; Creating the tools to make everyone more effective at home and at work; and helping you share and remember the moments that matter in life.

It’s why I am so excited about the velocity and execution on our platforms, apps and devices.

First, platforms.  With hindsight, Android and Chrome were no brainers.  At the time they were big bets.

The momentum across these platforms is tremendous, as you saw at our annual I/O developer conference in May.  I was astounded we had over 1M people tuning in live just to watch our developer keynote!

We’ve now activated more than 900M Android devices worldwide--and we’re lighting up over 1.5M devices every day.  That’s pretty amazing given the first Android phone launched less than five years ago.

And apps usage is increasing fast.  Over 50BN apps have now been downloaded from the Google Play store.  In fact, we’ve already paid out more money to Android developers this year than in the whole of 2012.

I love the ability to access your “stuff” on Play anywhere.  Take our new music subscription service.  Launched in May, it is an easy, fun way to discover new music with all the songs there, ready to go.  You never have to think about the device you are using.

Chrome—even though only four years old—has over 750M users worldwide and growing!

Then next, apps.  Our goal is to design everything so it’s beautifully simple and hassle free.  Users shouldn’t need to think about our technology.  It should just work.

This quarter we completely revamped our maps UI.  The map is the screen, with no clutter around the edges.  There’s more information about your surroundings, so it’s easier to explore.  And we’ve launched a new, improved navigation feature—with notifications about incidents before you leave, and updates to save time if traffic conditions change.  Best of all, this new maps experience is now available on almost  all devices you’d be likely to use.

It’s the same with Google+. We’ve done a complete redesign to make use of the entire screen, and everything looks consistent whatever the device or the platform.

In addition, the team massively upgraded the photos experience, making software designed for professionals automatically available to everyone … for free!  There’s no need for wrinkles anymore!  Take a look on plus, many of your photos will now be marked “enhanced” and improved automatically.

Finally we launched a new communication app called Hangouts—you can talk to the people you care about across all the major platforms.  Video calls from your phone are very cool, give them a try.

And I’m excited about the progress we continue to make with search.  Our Knowledge Graph is now available in 29 languages—and we’ve expanded the range of information available.  For example, we just added nutrition data.  Ask Google how many calories there are in a glass of white wine and you’ll find out it’s 123.  Or an avocado … 234 calories.  It’s good to have the facts if you want to keep healthy.  And we launched Google Now on iOS in April.

In the same way, we want to make advertising super simple for customers.  Online advertising had developed in very device specific ways with separate campaigns for desktop and mobile. This made arduous work for advertisers and agencies, and meant mobile opportunities often got missed.

It’s why we launched Enhanced Campaigns.  Advertisers have upgraded 6M campaigns, that’s almost 75 percent of all their active campaigns.   And Nikesh will talk in a little more detail about the positive reaction from clients.  This is the biggest-ever change to AdWords and the velocity and execution has been great thanks to the hard work of all the teams.

Finally, devices.  There is so much excitement around new devices today, and the potential for innovation is tremendous.

You can now buy the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play editions, and enjoy the best of Google.  And there’s a ton of momentum around Chromebooks, which are growing fast and defying the more general decline in PC sales.

Finally I know you’re all eagerly anticipating what Motorola is launching soon.  Having been a tester for a while, I’m really excited.

We’re very optimistic about the opportunities in front of Google today.  The potential for technology to make people’s lives better is tremendous.  But to achieve that potential we need to stay focused.  It’s why we continue to invest the vast majority of our resources and time in our core products.  But my job as CEO is also to think about the future, and ensure we continue to bet on new technology that can solve big problems in the world.

Project Loon, which we launched in June, is a great example. Bringing affordable, balloon-powered Internet access to remote areas is an idea that Sergey and I had been thinking about for over a decade.  It was great to see that project literally get off the ground, and give people a bit more hope for an improving world.

None of this would happen without great people and we are so lucky that we have them.  I'd like to thank all the Googlers and Motorolans who make everything possible.  Keep up that velocity and execution.

What A Wild Day For Microsoft: Recap of Recent News

SURFACE RT FIASCO

Everyone was thinking that the Surface line of tablets was going to pull Microsoft out of its slum. Unfortunately, consumers weren't worrying about the corporation as they were browsing on their iPads or checking email on their Galaxy Note. Sales were so low Microsoft was forced to cut the price of the Surface RT by $150, down to $349. But, the company still wasn't done screwing up. Yesterday, Microsoft wrote off $900 million onto its unsold inventory. This almost billion dollar payment just puts another nail in Microsoft's coffin. Still, the company has the nerve to continually post ads on its social channels to try and make the Surface more attractive. But, it's just too late; customers are too attached to their walled gardens, be it Android or iOS. The Windows 8 operating system and tablets arrived too late in the game. Apple's iPad was out for a full 20 months prior to Microsoft releasing its own line of tablets. That allowed consumers to get nice and cozy in the Apple walled garden as Microsoft sat on its deteriorating market share worrying about its enterprise technology.

STOCK CRISIS

Today, investors ransacked Microsoft's stock price. After starting off generally well, starting at 10:20am, investors began hitting  the kill button. The stock fell by $4.04, the equivalent of 11.40%. Today's plummet is the worst for the company since 2000. Microsoft is worth $32 billion less since the Surface RT announcement. “We know we have to do better and this is one reason we made the strategic and organizational changes last week,” Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood said today during its Q4 earnings conference call. “We are confident we are moving in the right direction.”

Apple To Acquire HopStop, Popular Transit App

As first reported earlier by Bloomberg, Apple is acquiring popular navigation app HopStop to help improve its sucky Maps app. This purchase has been confirmed by AllThingsD. This new buy comes just hours after notice of Apple acquiring Locationary. I wouldn't go as far as to say Apple is going on a shopping spree today, but it's becoming close to that.

VLC Returns to the App Store

Two years is a very long time. Back in 2001, Apple pulled the popular VLC Media Player off of iTunes because of licensing fights. This was a major let down for Apple fans who watch content in non-friendly Apple file types.
The media player has since returned to iTunes. Some popular features of the app are that it syncs with iTunes, supports downloads from URLs, WiFi syncing, and the ability to pull media from Dropbox. VLC has the ability to read any video codec. The app supports multi-track audio (including 5.1) and subtitles, so the movies look and sound amazing. One of the best features is that it also comes with AirPlay integration.
The final icing on the cake is that there are no more licensing disputes. VideoLAN, the non-profit behind the app, said it has a Mozilla Public License v2 that allows for sale in the App Store.

 

VLC is available for free on the App Store.

Rovio Fans Can Now Sync Progress Across Devices

Get ready to sync your Angry Birds and Croods game progress across all of tour devices. After a small trial in May, Rovio has said its account-synchronization system is being rolled out globally on iOS and Android. When you download a game, login with your Rovio account to continue playing. Right now, the syncing only works with Angry Birds and Croods.